Currently, when a user has a problem with a product and seeks technical support, the user needs to contact the technical support staff through e-mail, telephone, or through some online Web-based form system. Typically, a user seeks technical support by submitting a Web-based form. In less formal environments, such as corporate scenarios, a user is more likely to obtain non-urgent technical support through e-mail as it is easily accessible to all.
Usually technical support staff need to collect specific information in order to answer successfully an incoming support request. For software technical support, the information often includes the version of the product in use, what operating system the product runs on, what area of the product the problem lies in, and what error message appears. Users are often unaware of the specific information needed by technical support staff. Hence, incoming e-mails requesting technical support often lack the complete set of specific information that technical support staff need to successfully answer the e-mail.
Further, e-mail contents are usually unstructured. Thus, processing of requests sent by e-mail often is a manual and time-consuming process. For example, a support staffer needs to read an e-mail request, then mark it up with metadata or categorize it, then route it to the proper support staffer overlooking a specific area. Often the support staffer needs to send questions back to the user to get the proper details about the problem.
E-mail may be designed to contain form fields requesting specific information from a user and presenting the information in a structured manner. However, such e-mails are difficult to build and data from such e-mails are difficult to aggregate and manage.
On the other hand, Web-based forms provide structures for data concerning a problem, thus enabling technical support staff to quickly process the data. But Web-based forms usually lack the convenience and versatility of e-mails, which support quick target ad hoc communication.
Often a specific e-mail distribution list may be designated to receive and address questions and issues concerning a product or service. Usually, a user has no knowledge about an e-mail distribution list before the user sends information to the e-mail distribution list. Often a user wonders whether the e-mail distribution list is the correct one for the type of question the e-mail is addressing. Furthermore, a user who posts a question to an e-mail distribution list often has no knowledge about whether the e-mail question has already been asked. One of the most common complaints on many product or service support distribution lists is that the same questions are asked over and over again. Usually a frequently asked question (FAQ) list is provided to help solve this issue. However, FAQ lists usually are not discoverable from an e-mail distribution list.
Therefore, there exists a need to eliminate the cumbersome manual steps in processing information submitted in unstructured e-mail help requests. There is also a need to combine a Web-based form with e-mail so the form in an e-mail can be easily built and processed. There is a further need to enable a user to have easy access to information concerning an e-mail distribution list.